The hospitality industry has the second lowest tenure in the UK, according to a new study into employee retention.
The ‘Employee Retention Report’, compiled by equity management platform, Vestd, analysed a total dataset of 398,006 employees from 1,400 UK companies on LinkedIn to determine the average median employee tenure across 14 industries.
Hospitality had the second lowest tenure with employees staying an average of three years at a company, just ahead of the marketing industry with 2.8 years.
This research comes after a CIPD report found that 30% of UK employees leave to join another organisation every year, with Google trends data revealing 7,000 web searches for ‘letter of resignation’ in the past month alone.
Hospitality has a notably young workforce, as although young people aged 16-24 only make up 10% of the overall UK workforce, they make up 50% of waiting staff, 48% of bar staff and 48% of baristas according to ONS data. This may influence the lower tenure as research suggests younger generations are more likely to stay in jobs for shorter periods, with over three-fifths of 20-24 year olds only remaining in a job role for up to two years.
Although 41% of surveyed hospitality businesses improved their well-being processes in the last five years, 29% employees reported they had no communication from well-being leads regarding resources, support and training.
The data also revealed that the IT industry had the third-lowest tenure (3.1), with employees more likely to stay in startups and SMEs (3.3) compared to an enterprise-size business (2.8).
In addition, startup and SME companies had on average lower tenure than enterprise companies, likely because startups offer less stability, with around 60% failing in their first three years of business.
Commenting on the findings, Ifty Nasir, CEO of Vestd, said:
“Employee tenure is a key indicator of job satisfaction and company culture. Our findings demonstrate that, while it is natural to see movement between companies, industries like marketing, hospitality, and IT are struggling to effectively retain staff for long periods of time, leading to higher turnover rates and disrupted workplaces.”
“But with financial stability and well-being becoming a key priority for employees across all industries, offering robust packages that respond to these shifting needs has become a powerful incentive to not only retain current staff, but attract new talent.
